Each state is allocated a number of
electors that is equal to the size of its delegation in both houses
of Congress combined. With the ratification of the 23rd
Amendment to the Constitution in 1961, the District of
Columbia is also
granted a number of electors, equal to the number of those held by
the least populous state. However, U.S. territories are not
represented in the Electoral College.

Under the original system established by Article Two, electors
could cast two votes to two different candidates for president. The
candidate with the highest number of votes became the president,
and the second-place candidate became the vice president. This
presented a problem during the presidential election
of 1800 when Aaron Burr received the
same number of electoral votes as Thomas Jefferson and challenged Jefferson's
election to the office. In the end, Jefferson was chosen as the
president due to Alexander
Hamilton's influence in the House of Representatives. This
added to the deep rivalry between Burr and Hamilton which resulted
in their famous 1804 duel.

In response to the 1800 election, the 12th
Amendment was passed, requiring electors to cast two distinct
votes: one for President and another for Vice President. The
Amendment also established rules when no candidate wins a majority
vote in the Electoral College. If no candidate receives a majority,
the selection of President is decided by a ballot of the House of
Representatives. For the purposes of electing the President,
each state only has one vote. A ballot of the Senate is held to choose the Vice
President. In this ballot, each senator has one vote. If the
President is not chosen by Inauguration Day, the Vice
President-elect acts as President. If neither are chosen by then,
Congress by law determines who shall act as President, pursuant to
the 20th
Amendment.

Constitutionally, the manner for choosing electors is determined
within each state by its legislature. During the first presidential
election in 1789, only 6 of the 13 original states chose
electors by any form of popular vote. Gradually throughout the
years, the states began conducting popular elections to help choose
their slate of electors, resulting in the overall, nationwide
indirect election system that it is today.

Although the nationwide popular vote does not directly determine
the winner of a presidential election, it does strongly correlate
with who is the victor. In 52 of the 56 total elections held so far
(about 93 percent), the winner of the Electoral College vote has
also carried the national popular vote.

However, candidates can fail to get the most votes in the
nationwide popular vote in a Presidential election and still win
that election. In the 1824 election mentioned above, Jackson won
both the popular vote and the electoral vote, but it was eventually
decided by the House. Then in 1876, 1888 and 2000, the winner
of electoral vote actually lost the popular vote outright. Numerous
constitutional
amendments have been submitted seeking to replace the Electoral
College with a direct popular vote, but none has ever successfully
passed both Houses of Congress. Another alternate proposal is the
National
Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an interstate compact whereby
individual participating states agree to allocate their electors
based on the winner of the national popular vote instead of just
their respective statewide results.

The primary elections and caucuses are run by state and local governments. Some
states only hold primary elections, some only hold caucuses, and
others use a combination of both. These primaries and caucuses are staggered
between January and June before the federal election, with Iowa and New Hampshire traditionally holding the first presidential state
caucus and primary, respectively.

Like the general election, presidential caucuses or primaries are
indirect elections. The major political parties officially vote for
their presidential candidate at their respective nominating
conventions, usually all held in the summer before the federal
election. Depending on each state's law and state's political party
rules, when voters cast ballots for a candidate in a presidential
caucus or primary, they may actually be voting to award delegates
"bound" to vote for a candidate at the presidential nominating
conventions, or they may simply be expressing an opinion that the
state party is not bound to follow in selecting delegates to their
respective national convention.

Unlike the general election, voters in the U.S. territories can also
elect delegates to the national conventions.

In addition to delegates chosen during primaries and caucuses,
state delegations to both the Democratic and Republican conventions also
include "unpledged" delegates who can vote for whomever they want.
For Republicans, these include top party officials. Democrats have
a more expansive group of unpledged delegates called "superdelegates", who are party leaders and
elected officials.

Each party's presidential candidate also chooses a vice
presidential nominee to run with him on the same ticket, and this choice is basically
rubber-stamped by the convention.

The popular vote on Election Day

Under the constitution, the manner for choosing electors for the
Electoral College is determined by each state's legislature.
Today, the
states and the District of
Columbia each conduct
their own popular elections on Election Day to help determine
their respective slate of electors. Thus, the presidential
election is really an amalgamation of separate and simultaneous
state elections instead of a single national election run by the
federal government.

Like any other election in the United States, the eligibility of an
individual for voting is set out in the Constitution and also
regulated at state level. The Constitution states that suffrage
cannot be denied on grounds of race or
color, sex
or age for
citizens eighteen years or older. Beyond these basic
qualifications, it is the responsibility of state legislatures to
regulate voter eligibility.

Generally, voters are required to vote on a ballot where they
select the candidate of their choice. The presidential ballot is
actually voting "for the electors of a candidate" meaning that the
voter is not actually voting for the candidate, but endorsing a
slate of electors pledged to vote for a specific Presidential and
Vice Presidential candidate.

Many voting ballots allow a voter to “blanket vote” for all
candidates in a particular political
party or to select individual candidates on a line by line
voting system. Which candidates appear on the voting ticket is
determined through a legal process known as ballot access. Usually, the size of the
candidate's political party and the results of the major nomination
conventions determine who is pre-listed on the presidential ballot.
Thus, the presidential election ticket will not list every single
candidate running for President, but only those who have secured a
major party nomination or whose size of their political party
warrants having been formally listed. Laws are in effect to have
other candidates pre-listed on a ticket, provided that a sufficient
number of voters have endorsed the candidate, usually through a
signature list.

The final way to be elected for president is to have one's name
written in at the time of election as a write-in candidate. This is used for
candidates who did not fulfill the legal requirements to be
pre-listed on the voting ticket. It is also used by voters to
express a distaste for the listed candidates, by writing in an
alternative candidate for president such as Mickey Mouse or comedian Stephen Colbert (whose application was voted
down by the South Carolina Democratic Party). In any event, a
write-in candidate has never won an election for President of the
United States.

Because U.S.
territories are not represented in the Electoral College, U.S.
citizens in those areas do not vote in the general election for
President. Guam has held
straw polls for president since the 1980
election in order to draw attention to this fact.

Electoral college

Most state laws establish a winner-take-all system, wherein the
ticket that wins a plurality
of votes wins all of that state's allocated electoral votes, and
thus has their slate of electors chosen to vote in the Electoral
College. Maine and Nebraska do not use
this method, opting instead to give two electoral votes to the
statewide winner and one electoral vote to the winner of each
Congressional district.

Each state's winning slate of electors then meets at their
respective state's capital on the first Monday after the second
Wednesday in December to cast their electoral votes on separate
ballots for President and Vice President. Although Electoral
College members can technically vote for anyone under the U.S.
Constitution, 24 states have laws to punish faithless electors, those who do not cast
their electoral votes for the person whom they have pledged to
elect.

In early January, the total Electoral College vote count is opened
by the sitting Vice President, acting in his capacity as President of the
Senate, and read aloud to a joint session of
the incoming Congress, which was elected at the same time as the
President. In the event that no candidate receives a majority of
the electoral vote (currently at least 270), the President is
determined by the rules outlined by the 12th
Amendment.

Unless there are faithless electors, disputes, or other
controversies, the events in December and January mentioned above
are largely a formality in the public eye since the winner can be
determined based on the state-by-state popular vote results.

Trends

A number of trends in the political experience of presidents have
been observed over the years. In recent decades, the presidential
nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties have
been either incumbent presidents, sitting or former vice
presidents, sitting or former U.S. Senators, or sitting or former
state Governors. The last major nominee
from either party who had not previously served in such an office
was General Dwight D.Eisenhower, who won the Republican
nomination and ultimately the presidency in the 1952 election.
Chester A.Arthur had held no federal or statewide
office, prior to becoming Vice President and then President.

The U.S.Secretary of State used to
be a stepping-stone to the White House, with five of the six
Presidents who served between 1801 and 1841 previously holding that
office. However, since 1841, only one Secretary of State has gone
on to be President (James
Buchanan).

Despite the 2008 election, contemporary electoral success has
clearly favored state governors. Of the last six presidents, four
(Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill
Clinton and George W.Bush) have been governors of a state.
Geographically, these presidents were from
either very large states (California, Texas) or from a
state south of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of Texas (Georgia, Arkansas). In all, sixteen presidents have been
former governors, including seven who were in office as governor at
the time of their election to the presidency.

After leaving office, one President, William Howard Taft, served as Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court. Only two Presidents, John Quincy Adams (serving in the House)
and Andrew Johnson (serving in the
Senate), have served in Congress after being President. John Quincy
Adams however is the only former President to be elected to federal
office; when Andrew Johnson served as a Senator state legislatures
appointed the Senators.

Electoral college results

The following is a table of electoral college results:

Political party of each candidate is indicated in
parentheses

* Winner received less than an [[absolute majority]] of the
popular vote.'' :'' † Losing candidate received a [[Plurality
(voting)|plurality]] of the popular vote.'' :'' ‡ Losing candidate
received an [[absolute majority]] of the popular vote.'' :''** As
the second place winner, was elected Vice President as per the
rules in place prior to the Twelfth
Amendment.

Voter turnout

Voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008
elections showed a noticeable increase over the turnout in 1996 and
2000. Prior to 2004, voter turnout in presidential elections had
been decreasing while voter registration, measured in terms of
voting age population (VAP) by the U.S. Census, has been
increasing. The VAP figure, however, includes persons ineligible to
vote — mainly non-citizens and ineligible felons — and excludes
overseas eligible voters. Opinion is mixed on whether this decline
was due to voter apathy [761637] or an increase in ineligible voters on
the rolls.The difference between these two measures are illustrated
by analysis of turnout in the 2004 and 2008 elections. Voter
turnout from the 2004 and 2008 election was "not statistically
different," based on the voting age population used by a November
2008 U.S. Census survey of 50,000 households [761638]. If expressed in terms of vote
eligible population (VEP), the 2008 national turnout rate was 61.7%
from 131.3 million ballots cast for president, an increase over of
1.6 percentage points over the 60.1% turnout rate of 2004, and the
highest since 1968.

Notes

Out of the 13 original states during the 1789 election, 6
states chose electors by any form of popular vote, 4 states chose
electors by another method, North Carolina and Rhode Island were
ineligible to participate since they had not yet ratified the U.S.
Constitution, and New
York failed to appoint their allotment of electors in time
because of a deadlock in their state legislature.

http://www.fairvote.org/e_college/faithless.htm

Here a “major candidate” is defined as a candidate receiving at
least 1% of the total popular vote or more than one electoral vote
for elections including and after 1824, or greater
than 5 electoral votes for elections including and before
1820.

Both Burr and Jefferson received the same number of electoral
votes. The tie was broken by the House of Representatives, sparking
a series of events that led to the passing of the Twelfth
Amendment

There was a dispute as to whether Missouri's electoral votes in
1820 were valid, due to the timing of its assumption of statehood.
The first figure excludes Missouri's votes and the second figure
includes them.

None of the four presidential candidates in 1824 received a
majority of the electoral vote, so the presidential election was
decided by the House of Representatives

Greeley came in second in the popular vote but died before
electoral votes were cast. Most of his electors cast votes for
Hendricks, Brown, and Jenkins; while another three electoral votes
to Greeley were disqualified.

Byrd was not directly on the 1960 ballot. Instead, his
electoral votes came from several unpledged electors and a
faithless elector

Presidents John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore,
Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson all
lost their party's nomination for a second or third term while in
office.